Another dimension of Jesus’ commitment to righteousness is revealed in Psalm 45. The writer of this beautiful poem is singing a hymn of praise to the King, a love song that finds its ultimate fulfillment in the person of Jesus. Under the leading of the Holy Spirit, the writer makes this declaration about Jesus that points with boldness and clarity to the benefits of loving righteousness:Your throne, O God, is forever and ever;
A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of...

If we are to come into our full inheritance of authority on earth as it is in heaven, it is also essential that we perceive that Jesus is the model of each of these character traits. It is Jesus to whom we are joined in the true marriage covenant, and it is He who gives full expression to each of the Beatitudes. Therefore, to embrace the Beatitudes as our lifestyle is to cooperate with the process of conformity to His...

When righteousness is centrally established and becomes the goal and expression of our lives, there emerges a marvelous confidence that God Himself is our champion. We begin to realize that nothing can shake us from our place in His heart, and that He is the one watching over our every circumstance. King David was one who understood this principle to a wonderful degree. His writings reflect a deep confidence in the Lord his God who would protect him in the...

Since these things are true, the only thing that really ought to matter to me is the discovery of what God thinks about me. Once I begin to understand His definition of reality in general, and my life in particular, then I begin to have the hope of coming to some sense of fulfillment and power. Consider the words of Martyn Lloyd-Jones as he writes of the ultimate importance of God’s priorities being established in our hearts:We are not meant...

The biggest mistake we make is when we attempt to be righteous by our own energy and strength. Instead of focusing on falling in love with Jesus, and allowing His Spirit to transform us, we try to “behave ourselves.” We try to act like Jesus without being transformed by His power first. We want to be good enough to gain God’s approval. This will lead us to frustration with absolute certainty. The Scripture is clear that with the single exception...

One of the things that Marie and I enjoy is looking at cars and dreaming about what it would be like to tool down the motorway in a variety of luxury SUVs or sports models. Marie is captivated by the Porsche Cayenne, and fantasizes about the thrill of driving one. I particularly like BMW’s, and am intrigued by their motto: “The relentless pursuit of perfection.” The motto points to the elusive but conceivable goal of their company – to produce...

The process of forming meekness in any of us usually involves a series of stages, with some of them almost inevitably traumatic. I have long been convinced that only God knows the true identity and destiny of any given individual. Only God (or those who speak with an understanding of His opinion) can communicate to a person with the necessary authority to establish them in settled truth concerning who they are. If it were our natural inclination to listen to...

How does the idea of meekness fit in your mind with reaching your power potential? For most of us, the word “meekness” conjures up an image that would seem on the other end of the spectrum from the idea of power. So what do we do with the fact that Jesus puts the term “meekness” in the same breath with inheriting the earth!? Surely there are interesting and exciting things for us to discover as we look into this Beatitude.The...

Mourning in the Experience of Jesus It is in the person of Jesus that the fullness of this prophetic picture comes into focus. Several times in the Old Testament God speaks of His desire to have a man who would join with His heart, feeling God’s pain, and standing with Him in the ministry of intercessory prayer. If He could find such a man to share in His agony, He would relent from His judgments and release mercy instead. Therefore, when...

One of the great problems with our fallen human nature, however, is that we will do almost anything to avoid facing the reality of our situation so that we can mourn over it and move forward. In our contemporary culture we have grown to hate the thought of taking any kind of responsibility for the circumstances of our lives. We have cultivated a culture of blame-shifting, and would rather find fault with something outside ourselves than to reckon ourselves responsible....

Real mourning is a lost art in our medicated Western culture. Our extreme distaste for any experience of painful emotion drives us to all sorts of solutions trying to bring comfort to the situation in which real comfort stubbornly eludes you. We would rather do almost anything rather than endure a place of darkness. We drink alcohol, swallow pills, inject drugs, consume food, have affairs, spend money, leave town – anything to avoid an experience of real mourning. We desire...

The promise that Jesus makes to those who will come before the Father in poverty of spirit is fairly astonishing. He says “the Kingdom of Heaven will be yours.” In other words, those who embrace these character qualities will become participants in the life God intended for them here on earth now, and in the fullness of the Kingdom of God in the age to come. This is the life Jesus lived, a life fully established in a relationship of...

Jesus realized that He had come to fulfill God’s mysterious plan of bringing all heavenly things and all earthly things together in Himself. He was a man, but one who was full of the Spirit of God. In His merely fleshly existence, He could do nothing of power on His own initiative. Outside the intimate partnership with His Father He could not fulfill His destiny as the one who would bring together all things in heaven and earth. This realization...

It is necessary for us to see that Jesus Himself lived in the constant awareness of how much He needed the help and strength of God, His own Father. This is shown to us clearly in His encounter with the Jewish religious leaders recorded in chapter five of the Gospel of John. Here’s the scenario: Jesus has just healed a crippled man in a wonderful way, and the Jews are upset because He did it on the Sabbath day. Jewish...

As we begin the process of reflecting on the Beatitudes as the measuring stick for those who are being qualified to have authority on earth as it is in heaven, the first thing to notice is the order in which they are given. There is a purpose to that order, a progressive encounter with God’s character requirements that must be embraced that we might fulfill that which is His desire for us.Therefore it is significant that the first requirement for...